I have a WordPress site at the root of a bluehost account ( inside public_html ) and there is an add-on domain also residing in a folder named devsite inside public_html. We have spent months developing the content in the devsite to be ready to promote to production.

On Saturday, I made a control panel snapshot and downloaded copies of both the current production site as well as the development site. Then I tried the upgrade.

The first way I tried was to use a tool called DesktopServer on my Mac to import the devsite. That worked. I then tried to deploy it to the production domain as per instructions but the deployment failed.

I restored the site via the snapshot.

On Sunday I tried the "WordPress" way of FTPing the files to public_html and exporting the database, fixing the links using "Search & Replace for Wordpress databases" and modifying the WP-Config to point to the new database. None of the pages on the site transferred, the menus didn't transfer, the widgets were not set ... in short, the promotion was a disaster.

Today, I tried the DesktopServer method on the Windows 7 machine at work. However, after making the site archive, DesktopServer reports that it is unable to locate the main index.php in the site archive but I checked and it is there.

I am out of ideas on how to move this site to production and would appreciate and guidance or help.

You need to make a more specific question, using FTP is straightforward, what do you mean by "None of the pages on the site transferred"?
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WyckAug 12 '13 at 21:02

All of the posts, events, users, etc transferred but none of the content pages (and there are many) transferred. The site went from having probably 80 content pages to a home page and a "sample page."
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jgravoisAug 12 '13 at 21:09

That still doesn't help, what is a content page? Did you verify that these pages were exported when you download the site, did you verify this data was uploaded?
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WyckAug 12 '13 at 21:18

The page templates are in the theme's wp-content folder. I don't know where WordPress store page data.
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jgravoisAug 12 '13 at 21:35

Then, go to the cpanel for your production enviornment and select the PHP MyAdmin

Select the database for the production installation of your Wordpress
site

Then click on Import.

Broswe to select your the database file you downloaded.

Click Upload.

Once the database has been uploaded you may need to go into the dashboard > settings > permalinks. Just loading this page will refresh your permalinks. No need to make any changes but there are times when I have seen a 404 error. Refreshing permalinks usually solves this problem for me.

Once you receive a success message after uploading make sure you go activate the theme in the admin area.

That has worked for me many times when I have had similar issues to the one you are having now.